164 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. I42 



side shrines without protecting roofs are carved out of hard stone. 

 I have seen temples, the roofs of which have been ruined, thus ex- 

 posing the images for a time to the elements ; in a few months most 

 of the images were damaged by the heavy rains. 



Buddhist and Taoist temples are thought of as belonging to the 

 communities in which they are situated. This is why in recent years 

 people have considered that they had the right to use the temples for 

 other purposes. On the other hand, each temple generally has a group 

 of priests and lay members who control the affairs of the temple. In 

 Lo-shan an organization was trying to purchase a temple. When a 

 priest told me that it could not be sold, a lay leader whispered to 

 me that it could be sold. At Tou-pa, a village near An-pien, the com- 

 munity became much interested in education. They used several tem- 

 ples for schools, and the temple incomes for the support of the schools. 

 I have heard of other places where similar events took place. 



The most common name for a temple is miao, but there are several 

 other names such as ssu, an (West China ngan), fang, kuan, and 

 kimg. According to the Encyclopaedia Sinica a Buddhist monastery 

 is called ssu, and a nunnery, an, while both may be called t'ang. A 

 Taoist monastery or nunnery is called kuan, and a Taoist monastery — 

 but not a nunnery — may be called kung. Ancestral halls of private 

 families are called t'su. In West China ancestral halls are also called 

 chung miao or chung t'ang (Couling, 1917, p. 553). 



The number of temples varies in each village, city, or locality. 

 Chengtu, which normally had a population of 500,000, had 210 tem- 

 ples. Suifu, with a population of 100,000, had 83 temples. In and 

 very near Li-chuang, whose population was 20,000, there were 20 

 temples. Chio-ch'i, with a population of nearly 10,000, had 15 tem- 

 ples. These numbers may be regarded as fairly typical. Noting the 

 number and size of the temples built and supported by the Chinese 

 people, one may wonder at the statement sometimes made that the 

 Chinese people are not very religious. 



Buddhist and Taoist temples look so much alike that one cannot 

 see any difference between them. Temples sometimes have on 

 the top of the roof images of gods, dragons, and other creatures, and, 

 like most other Chinese buildings, the ends of the roof turn upward. 

 They are generally larger and higher than the other buildings near 

 them. The doors are wide and high, and their two halves open in- 

 ward. Instead of glass windows, there are beautiful wooden lattices, 

 some of the designs of which have come down for centuries and even 

 millennia. Some of the smallest temples are square, but most temples 



